Invoice Generator

How this is worked out

The United States is the odd one out here, and the difference is worth stating plainly: there is no federal list of things an invoice must contain, because there is no national sales tax to require one. The IRS treats an invoice as a supporting document for gross receipts, and asks supporting documents to establish the payee, the amount, proof of payment, the date and a description. That is the whole of it.

Sales tax is state law, and three separate questions. First, do you have nexus in the customer's state — a physical presence, or enough sales to cross an economic threshold. Second, is what you sold taxable there. Third, at what combined state, county and city rate. Most professional services are not taxable in most states, which is why the tax field on this page defaults to zero rather than guessing.

Economic nexus is the part that changed. Since South Dakota v. Wayfair in 2018, a state can require a remote seller to collect on sales volume alone, with no physical presence at all. California's threshold, for example, is $500,000 of tangible personal property delivered into the state in the current or preceding calendar year. Every state sets its own.

Sequential numbering is not a federal requirement and is still the right habit. It is what lets you show the series is complete, and it is what makes an unexplained gap answerable.

A worked example

Nexus, and why the tax box starts at zero

A tool that defaulted to a sales tax rate would be wrong more often than right, and wrong in the direction that overcharges your customer. The default is zero, and the rate is yours to enter, because the three questions behind it have to be answered before a number means anything.

The first is nexus: whether you have enough connection with the customer's state that it can require you to collect. Physical presence has always created it — an office, staff, inventory in a warehouse. Since Wayfair, so does sales volume, on thresholds each state sets for itself.

The second is taxability, and this is where service businesses usually stop. Most states tax tangible goods and only specified services. Design, consulting, legal and accounting work is outside the sales tax base in most of the country — though not all of it, and the exceptions have been growing.

The rate is not one number

Where sales tax does apply, the rate is a stack: a state rate, plus county, city and sometimes special-district rates. The combined figure varies inside a single ZIP code, because tax districts and postal boundaries were drawn by different people for different reasons.

Louisiana, Colorado, Alabama and Alaska are the hard cases, with substantial local rates administered locally. Alaska has no state sales tax at all and local rates in places above 7%, which is a fact that surprises people who have been told Alaska is tax-free.

This tool takes the rate you enter and applies it to the subtotal. It does not look up an address, because a lookup that is right most of the time is a liability on a document you are asking somebody to pay.

Getting paid, which is a different problem from invoicing

An invoice that is easy to pay gets paid sooner. That mostly means: a number the accounts payable system can key on, the purchase order number if the customer uses them, the payment method spelled out, and terms stated as a date rather than a phrase.

"Net 30" is a convention, not a legal term, and it means thirty days from the invoice date unless the contract says otherwise. Put the actual due date on the document — this tool computes it from the terms and prints it — because "Net 30" requires arithmetic and a date does not.

Late-payment interest is a matter of contract in the United States, and of state law where a contract is silent. If you intend to charge it, it has to be in the agreement before the work, not announced on the invoice afterwards.

Why this runs in your browser

An invoice contains your client's legal name, their address, what you did for them and what you charged. That is commercially sensitive on both sides, and it is exactly the category of information that should not be handed to a free web service in exchange for a template.

So nothing here is uploaded. The document is composed in your browser by a PDF library served from this site, and the page makes no external request of any kind. Open your network tab and watch: every request goes to this origin, and none of them carries your data.

The trade-off is that nothing is stored between visits. Use the copy-link button to keep the invoice in the URL, or export the PDF and keep the file. There is no account to create and nothing to delete afterwards.

Assumptions and sources

United States — no federal invoice contents

The IRS prescribes no contents for a sales invoice. It lists invoices among the documents that support gross receipts, and asks supporting documents to identify the payee, the amount paid, proof of payment, the date incurred and a description. https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/what-kind-of-records-should-i-keep checked 2026-08

United States — sales tax nexus

Following South Dakota v. Wayfair (2018), states may require remote sellers to collect sales tax on an economic threshold alone. California's, for example, is $500,000 of sales of tangible personal property delivered into the state in the current or preceding calendar year. https://www.cdtfa.ca.gov/industry/wayfair.htm checked 2026-08

Sales tax rates

State and average local rates are carried in tax/us-2026.js with their own source line. The combined rate at a specific address varies within a ZIP code and is not looked up here.

Sequential numbering

Not a federal requirement. Included because a complete numbered series is what makes a ledger checkable.

Not covered

State and local US sales tax rates and taxability, Quebec's mandatory billing rules and QST invoicing requirements, EU cross-border VAT and OSS, e-invoicing mandates, Making Tax Digital, construction industry schemes, and late-payment interest legislation.